


Synchronicity of the heart

by Nik0lai



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Amputation, Amputee Steve Rogers, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Brainwashing, Hydra Steve Rogers, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pining, Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Psychological Torture, Quote: I'm with you 'til the end of the line, Training, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-22
Packaged: 2020-11-21 19:49:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20860715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nik0lai/pseuds/Nik0lai
Summary: Both Bucky and Steve fall off the train. HYDRA finds two supersoldiers who work in perfect sync at the bottom of a ravine, limbs lost and pressed into the snow.They're together, 'till the end of the line.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [protaganope](https://archiveofourown.org/users/protaganope/gifts).

> Yeehaw this is a whole lot of angst fueled by a whole lot of coffee. Have fun, leave comments😏

The wind ws biting, the snow wet against both of their faces and their hands were aching as they battled to hold onto the outside of the train with every ounce of strength they had left in their bodies. 

The train wasn't slowing down, but to Steve and Bucky everything seemed to be in slow motion as they could feel themselves slipping one inch at a time. Steve turned desperately to Bucky, his face red and blotchy with tears and strain.

"Till the end of the line, Bucky. I'll be with you no matter what, I promise you! I promise you-"

"No Steve, please, I can't hold on any longer I can feel myself slipping-" 

Steve's tears had stopped slipping down his cheeks and he made his decision as he locked eyes and said

"Together. We do this together." And they both let go. 

* * *

Everything sounded like it was underwater and his eyesight was hazy and uncoordinated. 

Everything was cold and everything was white and his leg hurt _so goddamn much _and where on earth was Bucky?

He looked around again and saw a body a few feet away from him looking as battered as he felt and he saw with horror that the snow Bucky was lying on was stained crimson and he scrambled up to run to him, to check on him, to see if he's _okay-_

Or at least he tried to.

As soon as his legs moved his mind went blank and he realised hysterically that his face was buried in the snow and his body wouldn't move like he wanted it to and his face was burning where the snow touched it. He moved his head sideways so his eyes could assess what the fuck was happening to stop him from reaching his Bucky.

The tears were back. He couldn't understand what he was seeing, or rather what he wasn't seeing. His leg.. His leg wasn't there? All that's left is the bloodied remains of his thigh, his left trouser leg tattered but still _there, _and he could feel his horror mounting because he _couldn't move _and he feels _useless_ and there was black lights impeding the edges of his vision.

The last thing he saw before fading out again was a pair of heavy black snow boots walking up to him and a voice ringing out.

"Take them both. We'll train them yet." 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I made another chapter because I'm feeling inspired but at the same time not. I just want to make angst to the Best of The Kinks on a coach out from London.  
Hope you enjoy this Xx

_My name is Bucky Barnes,_

_I am twenty five years old,_

_My best friend is Steve Rogers._

_I am not a weapon._

_I do not work for HYDRA._

_I will do everything in my power to keep Stevie safe. _

_I'm with him till the end of the line. _

* * *

"Soldiers, training will commence at 0518. Be at the training lab or punishment will follow. Complete training in less than a day and you will get a reward. Fail to do so and you will be separated permanently."

The voice rang clear through the speaker in their cell - for that _was _what it was - and both Bucky and Steve looked at each other warily. This was their first true contact with someone in power in HYDRA and they didn't quite know what to expect from 'training' because they were expecting torture sessions. 

They both wondered silently if the training was just torture and interrogation being disguised to lull them into a sense of false security. 

What they _had _got so far from HYDRA was a new left arm and right leg and when they had tried to ignore the food and drugs that were forced on them, they soon found themselves on the needle end of a liquid diet and restraints that locked them to the beds that stood as the only function of the room they resided in. They learnt to obey, at least at the scheduled feeding times, otherwise they wouldn't be able to reach each other for simple physical comfort. The beds were _just_ too far away from each other for them to touch. 

"What do you think the so called training will include, Steve?" Not Stevie out loud, he hadn't been Stevie out loud since Brooklyn. 

"I've got no idea what they want, but they'll definitely want _something _in exchange for the new limbs and I don't know if I can even do much with this disgusting thing. I'm already too weak on my feet and I just don't know, Buck, I feel _weak." _He hated his new leg. Hated how perfectly it matched his correct leg but felt too heavy and too light all at the same time. He hated the most how much it hurt, wretched pain all day until his next batch of drugs come to let him feel guilty for wanting a release from his pain. 

"We're are _both_ _weak_, Steve, nothing is going to change that but we have to survive this. We cant let them win." He can't let them win, because they would take Stevie away and they both promised and they don't go back on promises like that. 

"You're right, I'm sorry, I don't know what's wrong with me at the moment. You're right, I just feel so _pathetic _that I can't help us out of this." pathetic pathetic pathetic _pathetic. _

* * *

"What do you think of them so far?" 

"For America's so called 'super heroes' they make a pathetic sight. I had hoped that they would be better under pressure, but I see they will be easily conditioned. Begin the brainwashing process tomorrow. I will see progress or I will see them dead."

"Yes sir." 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm not quite sure I like this chapter but it's quarter past nine and I'm still on the coach out of London so..  
Leave comments, leave kudos, I love yall, goodnight Xxx

_My name is Steve Rogers,_

_I am twenty five years old,_

_My best friend is Bucky Barnes._

_I am not a dancing monkey._

_I do not work for HYDRA. _

_I will do everything in my power to keep Bucky safe. _

_I'm with him till the end of the line. _

* * *

Turns out training was literal hell with his invalid leg and if he thought his whole body hurt before training then he would have to say his body now felt like a tenderised hunk of meat ready for the butchers knife to carve him up, which he may as well be by how useless his body is now to anyone, least of all Bucky.

He realised that HYDRA was trying to break them down and he also realised with depressing clarity that they will probably succeed.

The time they spent both in the army barracks and in the field made sure they know lots of tactics for fighting.

Long range shooting? He's fine at it, but it was really Bucky's forte from his hours practicing aiming with his slingshot at cans when they were younger.

Close range fist fighting was his best skill and losing all those fights throughout his years of being scrawny and unable to fight back taught him how to be fast, how to best deceive and subtly (or not so subtly) influence an opponent away from his own logic and into a fit of rage. People are easier to control then.

Espionage though? Forget it. They are both soldiers and what they are good at is fighting and they weren't trained any in the mind. If they were poked at with mind games and strobed for information they would end up breaking, this he knew.

This was what was going on in his mind as he was wheeled out of his cell - away from Bucky - strapped to a metal bed, drugged up to the gills.

* * *

Bucky glared with foggy eyes as HYDRA agents swarmed his Stevie and strapped him down to the metal bed as tight and flat as they can whilst he's still high as a kite.

They're being separated and all he could think past the rage of being ripped from Steve _again _was that it was beginning. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like this one more and I'm almost convinced that when I wake up this fic will be a fever dream from a coach and too much coffee, but I will be leaving you on a cliffhanger and the next chapter gets meaty hehe  
As always, hope yall enjoy, hope you leave comments and have a good ol sniffle reading it (is that what ppl do when reading angst? It's what I do is its sad enough..)  
Xxx

"We've had the 'supers' for two months now, yes?" 

"Yes sir, we have had them for over a month and we have analysed the skillet they excel in and what we need to train them in to get them up to standard."

"And who needs the most.. Intensive care, shall we say?"

"Of both of them, Rogers seems to be the one in need of more training. Barnes is more versatile of the two and seems to be struggling the least under the pressure, and I think I have a solution."

* * *

"At 1846 you will come to the observation room Barnes. Failure to comply will see your punishment. Failure to provide the necessary action will see your punishment. Rogers will not be with you."

Bucky slowly rolled his eyes up to the speaker placed next to the camera in the corner of the cell and he slowly repeated his lines in his head. 

_My name is Bucky Barnes._ My full name is James Buchanan Barnes but my friend's call me Bucky. 

Time ticked by slowly and he decided to curl up on his bed slab to try and wait the rest of the time away until he would be required to be in the observation room. 

_I am twenty five years old._ Born in 1917 in Brooklyn. 

He listened to steps walking steadily past in a further corridor and slowed his breathing methodically to a deep rhythm mechanically relaxed. 

_My best friend is Steve Rogers._ Steven Grant Rogers, I love him and he will never know because I will never tell him. He will never know because I don't deserve him and he is the brightest thing in my life. 

_I am not a weapon_. No matter what HYDRA tries to say to me, no matter what they try to threaten me with. 

_I do not work for HYDRA. _

It was nearly time to leave and the time was steadily approaching when the door would release and there would be a lower HYDRA agent to walk him to whatever stupid room they want him to go to and whatever stupid technique they want to try to make him crack open like a walnut. 

_I will do everything in my power to keep Stevie safe_. 

The alarm sounded and the door released and so he got up and walked up to the door to wait for it to fully open. There was a nondescript agent waiting for him and looking suitably bored. She had ginger hair and looked like she either wants to kill him or or to just abandon him. 

He raised his eyebrow in challenge and she sighed silently, rolled her eyes and said "follow me" 

_I'm with him till the end of the line. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> P. S. I really do love comments *wink wink* give me constructive criticism, give me a reaction to the chapter, give me predictions for future chapters, anything, I love them all! With that in mind I love yall and all the support that this has so far, bye! (the next chapter may take a while to come out, but there is hopefully a longer chapter rather than a short one)   
Xxx


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK so I'm not going to lie, this one did take a long time to come out and I lost a bit of motivation because of all the essays piling up but! I pushed through and this might just be the longest chapter yet? Certainly not the longest I've posted here on ao3, but in this story yes.  
I hope everyone enjoys the story, there isn't a graphic description of torture but it is heavily implied along with the aftereffects..

He was left standing by the door to the observation room and he sighed in annoyance. Can't people even leave doors open these days? Leave people feeling welcome? Apparently HYDRA can't do that because they're stupid so he has to open doors like these himself.

He opened the door huffily, expecting nothing behind the door but instead stopped short of the threshold feeling winded.

The room was as forgettable as they come, but that wasn't what he was fixated on, no. What he was staring wide eyed at was Stevie, who he hadn't seen for 4200 hours, who had been bundled away at a strange in-between hour in the morning where no questions had been answered and all the HYDRA agents wore masks to keep them from the gas being filtered into the room to knock them out.

Looking at Stevie now through the bulletproof one way mirror Bucky felt horrified - like he was in some mad nightmare that he needs to wake up from but can't.

Stevie was sat on a cold metal chair and all the lights in the room were pointed at him as if it was the set up for a morbid stage. But he could barely recognise his face, as beat up and bloodied as he was and his metal leg that he hated so much was the only true thing Bucky truly recognised from those 42 hours ago. There was a mesmerising steady drip of blood drip drip dripping down off Stevie's fingers onto the ground from deep lacerations on his arms that seemed to be singed at the edges. 

It looked like they had rolled him over with a car then sliced him up just for the fun of it. Weren't he and Stevie meant to be training together? What happened to that?

_I'm with him till the end of the line._

"I think I'm going to throw up" 

Bucky turned quickly away from the distressing image of Stevie sat so close yet so far from him and retched up bile into the corner of the room. He had stayed strong for Stevie but seeing him like this, not even knowing if he's _alive or dead? _Too much, far too much for Bucky at this time.

"Barnes don't tell me all we had to do was kill your boytoy and you would break?" a mocking voice that he had got to know too well drifted through a speaker he didn't even notice was there through the utter horror of seeing his Stevie like this. "My how the mighty have fallen. Rogers is dead, Barnes. Won't you comply now?"

* * *

They wheeled Rogers in with as much urgency as a man who has the super serum flowing through his blood warrants when given even the maximum dosage of tranquilizers. They have thee HYDRA agents and the doctors already knew they had to get him in the cell and locked down tight before he becomes lucid because never let it be said that they don't learn quickly after making mistakes. The first time they were too timid in their dosage for Rogers, scared they might kill him before was necessary and he had woken half way through the short trip from cell to the doctors experimentation room and yet he still woke up, groggy and pissed off. 

He started yelling that he wanted Bucky and pushing himself out of the restraints, straining desperately to try and escape back to the one living remnant from Brooklyn and his only ally in this hell. 

The HYDRA agents, tiring of the timidity of the doctors told them to increase the dosage next time and simply shot him in his thigh and calf. It took a month to heal, but it also took the doctors a month to come up with a high enough dosage for Rogers. 

And so he was trapped again inside his own body as HYDRA meticulously took it apart. 

They were all interested in "the perfect soldier" who had the _real_ super soldier serum thrum ing inside his veins, rather than Bucky, their old experiment, who they thought had failed and died on one of their many metal tables, impersonal and forgotten.

And they tried so very hard to break him - he knew he was barely hanging on to the last threads of his mind. They tried a wide array of methods so far and Steve felt as if his skin had been stripped back and scrubbed with acid as he sat in the cold metal chair. He knew without opening his eyes (which were both swollen shut and one was stuck together by a mixture of blood and tears) that his body looked worse than it truly was. And though he would be stiff and slowly healing for maybe two months after he would probably survive - be it with minimal scarring from the knives they used to slice him up and the acid they used to burn off his skin at the hip.

The worst scarring he knew would be his mind.

Whilst Steve was retreating in his mind he didn't even realise that the cell door was unlocked, nor that someone had walked in until he heard the agents voice slip out, all cold and hard edges that was thinly veiling heavy satisfaction.

"Barnes don't tell me all we had to do was kill your boytoy and you would break?" 

The faint whine of the intercom was attacking his head and he barely had time to process that Bucky (his Bucky! Steve thought deliriously) was on the other side of the glass

"My how the mighty have fallen. Rogers is dead, Barnes. Won't you comply now?"

A gunshot rang out and Steve's vision faded into stinging hot pain and then... Nothing. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope y'all enjoyed this, if you did I want to know! I literally love the comments so much and,, I want validation 😌  
But don't we all? See you next chapter, peace.   
Xx

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading this far yall this is all Eric's fault so. Blame him if u feel personally attacked by the "together line.  
Xx


End file.
